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The Los Angeles auto show is the North American hot spot for newly-released and forthcoming production cars as well as production-plausible concepts; CES in Las Vegas caters for the farther-out ideas, the reimagining of traffic and transport up and down the scale from ...

1. Summary and analysis of most of the 25 lectures including six from automakers and seven from lighting tier-1s. Overspanning highlights:• Digital manipulation of light is replacing hardware. ADB, though not yet allowed in the USA, is the headlighting technique of the future. Everybody's working on it (matrix/pixel, DLP, LCD, µAFS, or scanning) to improve the resolution.• But ADB is not suitable for dense mega-cities, so it is important to define a new light function such as Honda's ACL.• Headlamp aim is a real problem for automakers and suppliers because improper aim effectively spoils even good lights. Everyone is working on how to improve their lights' IIHS rankings.• Standardisation is a cost-lowering technique car makers are increasingly using.• Fast progress in LED & laser efficacy, luminance, and accuracy.• Regulations need to adapt quickly and be safety-orientated, anticipating new technology and autonomous vehicles.• New concepts (e.g., holography) and reliability improvements (e.g., condensation management) are now available to car makers.

2. The panel session on regulations headed by GTB President Geoff Draper, who is successfully steering stepwise progress on regulatory reform and coöperation to minimise divergence among regs in Europe, North America, China, Japan, Korea, and the rest of the world.

3. Networking amongst participants and speakers—illustrated with pictures of the exhibitations, during the lectures, during the breaks, and the dinner.

4. The round table chaired by Audi's Wolfgang Huhn, who led ten of the field's greatest experts in discussion on the future of vehicle lighting to help the community to better know the future of their jobs.

The Shanghai Auto Exposition is a massive affair with approximately 100,000 people attending daily. It is estimated that the 2017 visitor register will top 1 million mark during the nine-day event. With 1,400 vehicles displayed it quickly can overwhelm your senses with brands, style, musical presentations and people.

With a multitude of carmakers and brands from all over the world, the China brands are impressive and include but not limited to Changan (Drives the World) to BAIC (Innovation, Wisdom, the Future). We see Qoros and Brilliance, Wey and Hanteng, Haval and FAW, plus BYD. There's Dongfeng, Great Wall, Chery, Geely and SAIC. And those listed are the biggest ones.

Over the past ten years, China has emerged as a major player in the automotive global marketplace. The Shanghai Motor Show presents Chinese consumers with an opportunity to see the latest and greatest offerings from around the world. Also sharing center stage are the American, European and other OEM that are interested in capturing a piece of the pie from the Chinese market. So far, China's numerous carmakers have been enjoying a booming domestic market. It's now the world's biggest market, with 24 million cars sold last year, and continues to expand, as China grows.What was noticed ﬁrst was progressive styling and appearance that many of the Chinese OEMs are moving to. Styling that comes from the heart of the Chinese culture was visually stated with almost every OEM that exhibited. It is great to see China's individual cultural taste expanding and ﬁnding it in the new designs of their cars. Gone was the extensive copying of other OEMs designs, now there is truly a strong and impressive Chinese style that has also taken center stage with the rest of the OEMs.

Exterior lighting continues to wow consumers with beauty, dimensional effects and has really become the eye-catching jewels for the exterior. Illuminated logos, grills, headlamp signature plates will continue to expand with light. Interiors will continue to evolve and become more visually rich with materials and the use of lighting.

In this report, at the opposite of former reports on autoshow where we present the different concept-cars and production cars per OEM, we change presenting the different stylings showcased in the show, as some DRLs, Dynamic lighting, new texture, wave guides, illuminated brandings, or LED signatures.

The 4 Takeways at Geneva 2017

Once again an enormous success for this 87th edition. The Geneva International Motor Show had registered more than 690,000 entries as of two hours before the official closing on Sunday evening. This 87th edition was set in motion by the election of the Car of the Year, won by the Peugeot 3008, then the presentation of 175 new models and concept cars to a gathering of 10,700 media representatives from all over the world.Visitors had the pleasure of viewing more than 900 exciting vehicles on display within the framework of what has become the largest event for this countryAgain now, last former shows, a very low level of promotion about lighting in the booths and press releases of car makers in spite of many interesting headlamps and rear lamps equipped the new production and concept cars exhibited. With the arrival of LEDs, the designers have now the possibility to present daring and imaginative new lamps.

The 2017 DVN US Workshop in Rochester was our 15th Workshop overall, our forth in North America, and a smashing success. 275 attendees, 25% more than the last US workshop, represented automakers, tier-1 and -2 suppliers, academics, regulators, and renowned designers from all over the world.The expo booths were diverse and fascinating, and the 23 lectures were of a notably high level of excellence and interest, and the round table panel discussions—a unique and much-loved feature of DVN Workshops wherever they're held—brought formidable levels of expertise to bear on the pressing topical questions which, by their answers, will define and shape what the coming generations of vehicle lights will look like, how they will work, and how they will be regulated.

We present in the report the main trends in automotive lighting technologies

Future of automotive lighting is going to new functionalities, ith the arrival of autonomous cars

Digital is going to replace hardware and ADB, even not yet accepted by NHTSA, is THE technology all players are working on either in matrix/pixel or DLP, LCD, µAFS, or scanning.

Quality of aiming is becoming a real problem for OEMs and their suppliers because a bad aiming didtry the quality of a good lighting.

Many electronic comers are starting to be present in the automotive lighting as the presentations of NXP, Lear, IAV, showed it.

The importance of regulations, simple and oriented to safety, anticipating the news technologies related to autonomous vehicles.

The Detroit auto show has skidded quite a ways downward from its heights in the 1950s and '60s when it seemed everyone in the world wanted an American car (and that was the only type shown). Despite heavy promotion of the show as roundly international and all-inclusive, makers who did not display at the show included Bentley, Lamborghini, Maserati, Land Rover, Jaguar, Porsche, MINI, Ferrari, Rolls-Royce, and America's own Tesla. These makers, amongst others, increasingly see the Detroit show as simply not relevant in a current-day automotive world where the North American innovation hot spots are in Silicon Valley.

This year's Detroit motorama brought few jawdropping out-and-out surprises; rather, it was a showcase of the general trend toward higher lighting content on most vehicles offered in the world's second-largest vehicle market. One crucial piece of the context that separates the Detroit show from others round the world is that the US is one of the two countries on the North American regulatory island: the United States has its own lighting regulations, significantly different to the UN (or UN-approximate) regulations recognised by most of the rest of the world. So most vehicles on offer in America—and therefore most vehicles on display at the show—have different lighting system specifications and particulars than their equivalents elsewhere in the world. Red rear turn signals are allowed in America, for example, and front and rear sidemarker lights and reflectors are required, but side turn signal repeaters and rear fog lamps and DRLs are not. And ADB is still not yet legal in America, so models that come equipped in Europe are stripped of that feature for the American market. And it's not just lighting regulations that are different; most all North American vehicle regulations differ substantially from their international UN counterparts, as do North American vehicle buyers' habits and preferences, so it's really quite a different mix of vehicles than might be found at Paris or Frankfurt or Shanghai, for example.

Overall, last year's news is also this year's news: increasing lighting content on the front, sides, and rear of vehicles, but this is not a one-way trend. LED daytime running lights, though not required, are present on a lot more vehicles. The car-lights-as-art revolution, though it got its start in Europe, has well and truly spread to American shores. The whole industry, worldwide, is striving at an unprecedented rate to add glitz and fascination to what used to be purely functional, minimally-styled equipment. It is surely safe to say the old philosophy of vehicle lights as commodity items is shrinking in the American rear-view mirror. Another trend on the obvious increase is the use of lighting for brand and model-range identity advertisement.

The VISION 2016 Congress and Expo was bigger than ever before: nearly 600 people attended. This year a new venue replaced the redoubtable Versailles location—the Cité des Sciences, right in Paris. There was also a new venue, Mortefontaine, for 27 demonstrator cars this year to show off innovations and implementations for those VISION attendees who participated in the nighttime ride-alongs.

Lectures covered a wide array of different lighting-related topics—the expanding frontiers of front and rear lighting technology and technique, new and complicated developments in simulation, testing, and ranking. Also well covered: the urgent need and burgeoning possibilities for whole, entire new kinds of car lights. What's a pedestrian, accustomed to making eye contact with a human driver before crossing the street in front of the car, to do when there's no human driver? The autonomous car must be able to signal to the pedestrian "I see you, and it's safe for you to cross now". And that's only one example of numerous new machine-to-human messages that must be conveyable with light in ways that are universally understood, unambiguous, and inoffensive across the world's very diverse cultures. Heuristics for sifting useful strategies from thousands of ideas were presented, as were experiments with a variety of strategies for machine-to-human communication with light.

Rear lighting, too, was a hot topic. The development and manufacture of the world's first production OLED taillamp was presented in picayune detail across several lectures, as were new ideas including LCD displays to add graphic messaging display capabilities to combination rear lamps.

New kinds of augmented-vision systems were presented; Israel continues to be an interesting hot spot for development of this kind of technology. Several lectures presented comparisons of different wavelength bands (near infrared, far infrared, etc) for helping drivers see better.

Lasers, too, got a great deal of attention, with very intricate micromirror prototypes and new strategies to blend LED and laser light for high efficiency presented and discussed. Other unconventional new technologies included a new kind of driving glasses that sharply reduce headlamp glare without cutting down on the driver's use of his own lights, new ADB strategies, a dual-path tapdance around the age-old inefficiencies of polarised light for headlamp applications, and more.

The exposition portion of the congress comprised a large variety of companies showing off their products and services, and the pre-event and first-night dinners afforded ample opportunity for friendly and informative discussions amongst attendees.

Rarely have there been so many first showings of electric cars and production-based e-studies as at this year's Paris Motor Show. Some of the electric vehicles now reach such a distance autonomy that potential buyers will lose their "range anxiety".

Despite a very low level of promotion about lighting in the booths and press releases of car makers, many interesting headlamps and rear lamps equipped the new production and concept cars exhibited during this 2016 Mondial in Paris. With the arrival of LEDs, the designers have now the possibility to present daring and imaginative new lamps.

Around 240 attendees and exhibitors were present at the 2016 DVN Tokyo workshop. 38 were from 12 automaker brands, 72 were from 18 brands of lamp set makers, 118 were from 31 tier-2 brands, and ten organisations and regulatory bodies were represented.18 sponsors were present with wonderful exhibitions.The Japanese companies' lectures were notably interesting. They were presented in Japanese and the presenters were much more open and expressive than in European and American congresses.

The 5 key points developed during the DVN Tokyo Workshop 2016 were:

• With the arrival of autonomous cars, the future of automotive lighting is more and more complex and interesting to consider. How will today's functionalities merge with (and/or give way to) tomorrow's new ones?

• ADB, though not yet accepted by NHTSA, is the technology everyone is working on. There's a big mix of techniques (matrix, pixel, DLP, MEMS, etc).

• There's a glut of newcomers starting to be present in the automotive lighting field as the presentations of NXP and Mektec showed. And existing known participants as Bosch, Infineon, Lear, Panasonic, Texas Instruments, are branching out in interesting ways.• Standardisation is becoming more and more important, for all not visible inside the headlamp: light source, bulb holders, electronics, modules.

• We all need to advocate and strive toward regulations that are as simple, safety-orientated, performance-based, and technology-neutral as possible. Geoff Draper: "To realise the benefits of technology neutral and stable regulation its industry members must invest the time of its experts, and support the cost of the associated research".

Geneva offered a great variety of show cars this year, with everything from the very familial Renault Scenic to the powerful Bugatti Chiron and the innovative Opel Mokka, and niche vehicles like the Land Rover Cabriolet. Crossovers are really hotting up, with production intros from VW, Audi, Opel, Toyota, and a Subaru concept. And there were vehicles that would have seemed inconceivable just a few years ago—the Bentley Bentayga slated for U.S. sale this spring, and the Maserati Levante SUV appearing this week.

Many interesting new cars were presented, including Audi's Q2, the Mercedes GLC Coupé, the Toyota C-HR, Seat's Ateca, Peugeot 2008, and models from Kia, Subaru, Skoda, Jaguar, and more.

4 Takeaway points at the Geneva Auto Show

About lighting, with the general message about the shift to digital emphasised by the Mercedes E-Class, the four takeaway points DVN immediately retain from their visit are :

1. Decreasing headlamp height, especially on concept cars

2. DRL is a main function, now, no longer an ancillary add-on

3. Lighting to advertise technology content of the car as a whole

4. Strong visual signature by dint of rear light styling

As can be seen in this report, there’s new and exciting lighting on everything from small eco-cars to giant SUVs. The importance of lighting continues ramping up in advertising the overall technology and sophistication of a vehicle and its family ties and brand identity, and in projecting design themes to inspire emotional reactions.

The DVN Delhi Workshop was held on 9-10 February at the wonderful Crowne Plaza Greater Noida Hotel. The event got started with the DVN welcome dinner, which gathered all 200 attendees from 50 companies for a warmhearted special evening.

The next morning, the Workshop itself got started; the theme was:«Affordable Technologies and Energy Saving»and 20 lectures were presented.

After DVN Editor-in-Chief Hector Fratty's introductory speech on the status and the future of lighting, Robert Miller gave a keynote focused on styling, entitled "Lighting Design with the Car in Mind". The first two presentation sessions contained lectures on affordable front and rear lamps for emerging markets. There were interesting talks from Valeo, Hella, Minda, and IJL on affordable products and from Renault about the challenges to develop a worldwide car with such a range of different regulations, environments, and market preferences. Lumax-Stanley presented a new Bifunction LED with great improvements in weight, volume, and performance. Noted vehicle lighting film producer Rainer Neuman gave a charismatic presentation on advanced lighting technologies.

The third session centred on light sources—LEDs, of course, but also halogen for motorcycles (which make up a huge proportion of the Indian vehicle market) with the new H17 and for cars with new H18 and H19. The fourth session was devoted to Tier 2 presentations by Mentor, LMT, Docter Optics, and Snopsys—all of whom gave interesting information on affordable products. As is now de rigueur for a DVN Workshop, a panel discussion about regulations was chaired by GTB President Geoff Draper. This time, the rubric was "The Implications of a new approach to the UN Regulations for Indian Stakeholders", with participation of all organisations and companies involved in regulations in India. The subject of harmonisation and synchronisation was particularly relevant because although India is not a contracting party to the UN 1958 Agreement, Indian experts are regular contributors to the work of GRE and the country broadly follows the UN technical requirements. This workshop was an opportunity to gather an understanding the Indian perspective on regulation of automotive lights, lamps, and signals. Opportunity was taken to understand whether the stakeholders of India would be interested in a GTB initiative to lead a new global approach to the technical requirements, in close coöperation with the UN World Forum for Harmonisation of Vehicle Regulations (WP29).

15 lighting companies exhibited their products and services with a grand collection of display booths—presented in this report.